Tuesday, April 8, 2014

New Release: Huret, "American Tax Resisters"

This next new release is a fitting epilogue to Ajay Mehtrotra's fantastic posts on the "making of the modern American fiscal state" --

New from Harvard University Press: American Tax Resisters, by Romain D. Huret (University of Lyon). A description from the Press:

“The American taxpayer”—angered by
government waste and satisfied only with spending cuts—has preoccupied
elected officials and political commentators since the Reagan
Revolution. But resistance to progressive taxation has older, deeper
roots. American Tax Resisters presents the full history of the
American anti-tax movement that has defended the pursuit of limited
taxes on wealth and battled efforts to secure social justice through
income redistribution for the past 150 years.

From the Tea Party to the Koch brothers, the major players in today’s anti-tax crusade emerge in Romain Huret’s
account as the heirs of a formidable—and far from ephemeral—political
movement. Diverse coalitions of Americans have rallied around the flag
of tax opposition since the Civil War, their grievances fueled by a
determination to defend private life against government intrusion and a
steadfast belief in the economic benefits and just rewards of untaxed
income. Local tax resisters were actively mobilized by business and
corporate interests throughout the early twentieth century, undeterred
by such setbacks as the Sixteenth Amendment establishing a federal
income tax. Zealously petitioning Congress and chipping at the edges of
progressive tax policies, they bequeathed hard-won experience to younger
generations of conservatives in their pursuit of laissez-faire
capitalism.

Capturing the decisive moments in U.S. history when tax resisters
convinced a majority of Americans to join their crusade, Romain Huret
explains how a once marginal ideology became mainstream, elevating
economic success and individual entrepreneurialism over social sacrifice
and solidarity.

A few blurbs:

“In this important work, Romain Huret
reconstructs as no one else has the durable political tradition out of
which the Koch brothers, the Tea Partiers, and other prominent tax
resisters of our time emerged. A fascinating and indispensable guide to
150 years of movements, personalities, and struggles that have done so
much to shape the conservative temper in modern America.”—Gary Gerstle

“Romain Huret has written the
definitive account of tax resistance in the United States. Rather than
presenting opposition to taxation simply as part of American political
culture, he meticulously traces the organizations and activists who
fought and negotiated with the government as it developed its capacity
to tax income. An important history that reveals the roots of
contemporary debate.”—Julian E. Zelizer